


candy in wartime

by ninemoons42



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Candy, Childhood, Eating Together, Families of Choice, Family, First Meetings, Gen, Gift for Teacher, Grief/Mourning, Nightmares, PTSD, Pinky promise, Sibling Love, Wagashi, always-a-girl!Raleigh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 08:11:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up in wartime is difficult, but a sweet tooth doesn't have to be a casualty: or, a story in which always-a-girl!Raleigh and Mako rely on candy to get them through the difficult times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	candy in wartime

**Author's Note:**

> I have an entire tag for wagashi on my blog, found [here](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/tagged/wagashi), and those items inspired the things that Mako eats throughout the course of this fic.
> 
> One brand for the marshmallows with chocolate filling that Raleigh eats is Tenkei Chocolate Marshmallow, from Japan, seen [here](http://okashi.pl/product/tenkei-chocolate-marshmallow/) and also [here](http://tmblr.co/ZIJNMxqedwcm).

The clock strikes eleven by starting up a quiet little tune, something soft and strange and completely different, and Mako thinks about pulling the blankets up over her head. She can’t get used to a clock playing music. She’s too attached to the clock at home, her real home, the small house that was just a few rooms but was all her world: and the clock there helped her define that world, because you could hear its soft cuckoo-clock chimes all throughout the house and you couldn’t hear it even when you were standing just outside the front door.

Mako shivers and looks over the edge of her bed, and the floor seems so far away. A pair of soft red slippers. Shoes inside the house. Maybe her mother would feel as unhappy as she does now. At home, everyone walked around the rooms in clean white socks, whispering steps against the plain shining wooden floors. She had liked to follow her mother through the rooms, making things prettier with flowers and green leaves. She had liked to listen for her father’s footsteps when he came home, always through the back door and the garden, always smelling like salt and woodsmoke and metal.

Sometimes her father would come home carrying a small box of sweets, little pieces of bright surprising color in a plain wooden box, and he’d always let Mako have one before dinner, if she washed her hands and poured him a cup of tea that they could share.

Mako thinks of that last piece of candy, now, tiny and white and shaped like a rabbit. Little red eyes, dark grainy filling, the way it stuck to her teeth and tongue until she gulped down a glass of water - and even then she’d be able to remember just how sweet it had been, enough to make her giggle and tell her mother that her teeth hurt.

No more sweets, now. No sweets for a whole year. 

Mako sniffles and hides the sound in one sleeve, and she gets out of bed and ignores the slippers. The stone beneath her feet is thoroughly cold, and she wants to complain about the house, about how large and strange and unknown it is, but who will hear her? There is no one else here, she thinks. She is alone. The man who asks her to call him “Mister Stacker” is not here. He is often not here, and sometimes she wonders if this house is really his home.

Empty rooms. She steps carefully to the stairs, clings to the banister with both hands as she makes her way down to the kitchen. There is a sliver of light just ahead, a flash of sound, and Mako thinks about turning around and running back up, and then - someone calls her name.

“Mako? Is that you?”

“ _H-hai,_ ” she answers, without thinking. Without remembering that she’s still standing behind a door that’s only mostly closed.

Footsteps coming her way, and Mako flinches back, thinking of something much bigger, much louder, that is always just around the corner and walking towards her in her dreams - 

“Mako,” Mister Stacker says, and Mako almost screams, almost wets herself, and she goes limp and unresisting when a large warm hand takes one of hers.

“Mako? Listen to me,” Mister Stacker says, and his Japanese is halting and unfamiliar and it makes her look at him anyway, shocked and still.

“Mister Stacker,” Mako says. Her voice is small compared to his. Small and silent and still choked with fear. In her dreams the huge heavy footsteps chase her down dark roads.

“That’s right,” Mister Stacker says. He is trying to be quiet and she doesn’t know why. He sounds like he’s not used to speaking her language. “It’s me. I’m here. You’re safe.” 

She puts both of her hands in his own, because she remembers that he saw her and she saw him in the destroyed streets, on the day she saw her parents die.

“You must be hungry,” Mister Stacker says after a moment that, to her, sounds like he is looking for the right words. “Did you miss dinner?”

Mako nods.

“Would you like to eat something?”

She bites her lip, turns her face away, looks down at her bare feet. She’s still cold. She doesn’t know why she whispers, suddenly, “...Candy.”

And she doesn’t understand why Mister Stacker smiles and puts his hand on her head, large and startlingly warm. “I think,” he says, carefully, “that I have just the thing for you. But dinner first.”

She’s in his arms, and she wants to say that she’s too old to be carried - but he’s got her braced easily against his hip and now her feet are not touching the cold floor, so she hesitantly lays her cheek against the rough cloth of his shirt.

They pass through a door and he turns on the lights, and Mako has never been in this kind of kitchen before: a long narrow place. The pots and pans are warm when she reaches out to one, and Mister Stacker stops so she can take one of the lids in her small hands.

“It’s made out of copper,” he says. “Good for holding heat when you’re cooking. Do you know how to cook?”

Mako shakes her head. 

“Perhaps we can learn, together,” he says. “I am new to it myself.”

He puts her down on one of the counters, and the floor is a long way away, and Mako kicks her bare feet against the cabinet doors. 

Mister Stacker puts plates and food next to Mako’s hand: a small bowl of rice, a dish of vegetables in a dark sauce that smells like salt and soybeans, more greens sprinkled with sesame seeds. Two pairs of chopsticks and two small porcelain fish to rest the ends on. 

“I’m afraid it’s a little difficult to find green tea right now,” Mister Stacker says. “Would you like some milk?”

Mako nods, and then she stares, because he pours two glasses: he pushes the half-full one in her direction, and takes a long gulp from the other. “Milk is for children,” she says.

“And sometimes adults also have to drink milk,” Mister Stacker says. “My doctor said so, and I have to take his advice.”

“Why do you have to drink milk?”

Mister Stacker’s hands stop moving, and he looks down at his feet, and when he speaks, he sounds tired and strange and sad. “I’m not well.”

“Why not?”

He puts his hands in his pockets, and mutters something that she doesn’t understand, before saying, “I will explain it to you another time.”

Mako frowns, because she doesn’t want to start crying. She clenches her hands into fists. “That’s what my mother said when she said we had to take my father to the hospital. Are you going to die, too?”

Mister Stacker sighs, and takes her hands in both of his, and touches his forehead to hers for a minute. “I won’t die, Mako. Not now. Not for a while. I’ll be here.”

“Promise.” Mako holds out her little finger.

“I promise,” Mister Stacker says, and he hooks his much larger little finger around hers.

Mako eats her dinner solemnly, and finishes every grain of rice, and eats her share of the vegetables. She watches as Mister Stacker eats, and pushes the dishes in his direction, and says, “You have to eat, too,” frowning until he nods and does so.

“Thank you,” he says, when she passes him her empty bowl to put in the sink.

“Candy?” she asks. “You said.”

He smiles - a small smile, but he looks a little happier - and takes a long wooden box from the pocket of his coat. “Candy,” he says, “because you took good care of me just now.”

A pretty little leaf with veins and saw-toothed edges; a blue star dusted with white sugar; two flat discs of deep golden-brown cake: three small treats, and Mako looks at her box and then at Mister Stacker, and she doesn’t hear the terrifying footsteps for a long time afterwards.

***

When Raleigh is six, her mother comes home from the hospital with a bundle of soft white blankets, and everyone smiles and says “Ssssh!” and the only person she listens to is Yancy: Yancy, who has the loudest voice she knows. When he pulls on her braid she wrinkles her nose at him and she pulls on his sleeve in revenge, and he laughs a very small and very quiet laugh and says, “Come on, we have to meet our new little sister.”

“Is she pretty?” Raleigh asks in the same small voice, wanting to smile, because Yancy cannot stop looking like he wants to roll around and laugh until he’s breathless and tired and red in the face.

“She’s very pretty.”

“Prettier than me?”

“As pretty as you are, Raleigh, I promise,” Yancy says, and he taps on the tip of her nose like he’s trying to play a drum, two fingertips playing one-two-three-four, and Raleigh sneezes and whispers “Excuse me”, and the movement of it makes her dusty dirty skirts flutter around her knees, until something in her pocket knocks against her leg.

Maybe she knows what Yancy feels like, because when she puts her hand in her pocket she can feel the crinkly edges and the smooth wrapping, and she can feel the soft thing that she’s been carrying around with her. Her father has been passing long smelly brown sticks around to his friends, and tea cups to their wives. The children get lots of hugs and lots of smiles and only Raleigh has a treat, and she isn’t going to eat it.

She wants to give this treat to her sister, her baby sister. She doesn’t really know what it means when the adults talk about throwing a party to welcome the baby into the world. All she knows is that children like candy, and her sister is a child - a new child - and she gives candy to her friends and keeps most of it for Yancy, because Yancy is not just her brother. 

Yancy is her best friend, and he plays with her when their parents aren’t around, which is pretty often. Yancy knows where the best fields of grass are, and Yancy knows pretty much every dog on the street, and Yancy might not like Raleigh’s pet kitten but he fills a bowl with milk for Sinderelly at dinnertime, and that means Raleigh loves him best.

Maybe she’ll say that to her sister, too.

“Hey, hey, Earth to Raleigh,” Yancy sing-songs at her, and Raleigh blinks as he leads her out of their room, and suddenly she thinks that the candy might not be good enough. After all, she doesn’t know if the baby will like marshmallows filled with chocolate, especially when they might be bigger than her hand. 

“Yancy?”

She must look sad, because Yancy looks at her over his shoulder and they stop right there on the stairs, and he leans his head against her shoulder and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m scared, Yancy.”

“Scared of what?”

“Scared that the new baby might not like me.”

Yancy’s face goes through a series of funny folds, so he looks like he wants to smile or wants to laugh or wants to cry, and she doesn’t understand that last part, so she reaches out to take his hand again, and he holds on tight. “I asked Dad about that, too, you know.”

“What did he say?” Raleigh asks, and she’s even more afraid now.

“He said,” Yancy says slowly, “that babies love everyone, most of the time.”

“And what about the rest of the time?”

“He said he doesn’t know, either.”

“You think the baby might not like you?” Raleigh asks. “But you’re _Yancy_. I love you.”

“I love you too, Raleigh,” Yancy says. “And I want the baby to love me, and I want her to love you, because we’re her brother and sister.”

Raleigh squeezes Yancy’s hand as best as she can, because his hand is a little bit bigger than hers, and Yancy’s fingers are warm when he squeezes back. 

“We can try,” Raleigh offers after a moment. “Can’t we? Try to make her love us?”

“Yes, we can,” Yancy says. “Thank you, Raleigh.”

“It’s what you tell me to do, try and try and try,” Raleigh says. “Like addition and subtraction and coloring things and cutting out paper dolls.”

He laughs and squeezes her hand again. “Then come on,” he says. “Let’s meet the baby.”

Raleigh follows him, tiptoeing past the room full of the other adults and her dad, and when Yancy stops at one of the doors and knocks she’s shivering, and she puts her arms around herself. There’s a baby and now she is not the youngest person in the house, and she wants to have someone to care for the way Yancy cares for her.

But this baby is a stranger, too, someone entirely new, and Raleigh doesn’t always know what to say or do around strange people and strange children and strange things.

“Mom?” Yancy asks softly. “Can we come in?”

“Of course - you should come here and meet your sister,” is the answer.

Raleigh thinks her mom sounds tired, and when she comes into the room, she can see that her mom looks like she’s been running for days, and she’s still sweating even when she’s sitting up in bed and not really moving.

Next to the bed there is a tall sort of basket, and she can see the blankets heaped up in it - but wait, those aren’t just blankets, are they? She can see a tiny hand curled into a fist. A very small nose, and tightly closed eyes.

“That’s the baby?” she asks, and in her surprise she says it out loud. Too loud. She claps her hands over her mouth.

“Yes, that’s the baby,” says their mom, who is smiling as she holds her arms out to the two of them. “And the two of you are my babies, too. Come here.”

Raleigh scrambles into the bed but she’s not as fast as Yancy is, and she watches as he kisses their mom on the cheek and as she kisses him back on his forehead. 

“You, too, Raleigh,” she says, and Raleigh takes a deep breath and cuddles into her mother’s shoulder, warmth filling her up from that strong embrace. “Now, go and look at the baby,” she adds. “Your father suggested a name for her. How do you feel about _Jazmine_?”

“We get to choose her name, too?” Yancy asks.

Raleigh thinks, and looks at the baby as she sleeps, though she has to get up on the tips of her toes to see her completely. The baby has no hair. There is a dark brown mark on her right arm that is almost the exact shape and size of Sinderelly’s nose. She makes a tiny whistling sound when she breathes.

When Raleigh touches the baby’s wrist with one very gentle finger, she’s shocked to find out that the baby is warm, so warm, and she feels really good. She smells like water and milk and clothes that have just come out of the dryer, and Raleigh wants to learn how to hold her, and wants to sleep curled up next to her.

So Raleigh says, “Jazmine is a good name,” and she doesn’t hear Yancy laughing but she does put out her hand for him to take, and when she glances back at the bed her mother’s cheeks are wet and she doesn’t understand the wide, watery smile - but Raleigh smiles back, and then she switches her attention back to baby Jazmine, and whispers to her:

“Hello, Jazmine. I’m Raleigh. I’m your sister.”

And the baby stirs and makes a tiny little cooing sound, and opens her eyes, and looks right at Raleigh.

***

The line buzzes and hisses and as she waits for the phone on the other end to ring, Raleigh hunches over in a vain attempt to protect herself against another blast of freezing air. Her fingertips have long since gone numb, and she has to look at the receiver to make sure that she’s still hanging on to it in the first place. 

She waits and waits and waits, and she wonders if the connection even exists in the first place. It wouldn’t be the first time. No matter that it’s 2025; she’s in the middle of winter, and a phone call from Nome to anywhere else in the world is still a thing full of diceyness and the distinct possibility of getting cut off mid-sentence.

There’s a voice, distant and scratchy and immediately recognizable, calling Raleigh’s name: “Raleigh, where the hell have you been? Oh my god, I’ve been trying to find you for almost a month now! Are you all right?”

“Jaz, Jaz, catch your breath,” Raleigh says, and she smiles. She’s at the end of the world, and she doesn’t know where Jazmine currently is, and this is her sister, her last living family, and she can’t help but smile. The smile stretches the muscles in her face, triggering little aches and pains around her ears and along her jawline, and she keeps smiling until she has to speak again. “I’m fine. I think. And thank you for the card.”

“So it found you? Thank goodness. I hope they at least gave you something on your birthday. Where do they have you working now?”

“We’re getting closer to the North Pole every day, I think,” Raleigh says, and that is all she will say about her location. “And they gave me an extra ration of coffee. Not bread. Bread’s expensive around these parts. Have to be up top on the wall to get a fist-sized chunk of it.”

“Okay,” Jazmine says, and she sighs gustily.

Raleigh thinks of all the times when she’d been the one to sigh over broken toys and missing books and little heaps of baby teeth under pillows, and wishes, wildly and impossibly, that she could hug her sister. 

But Jazmine has been moving around the world, documenting the refugees and the continuing effects of the Kaiju War on them, while Raleigh has been running away from people ever since Yancy died.

She’s lucky to sleep four, five hours a night, because her mind keeps playing back the events from five years ago. It is as raw and fresh as it has always been. Yancy’s mind, ripped from hers, shredded and lost and vanished into absolute howling silence. Yancy, whom she’d followed into PPDC. They’d never expected to be Drift-compatible, and then they were, and then they were thrown into the cockpit of Gipsy Danger.

“Raleigh,” Jazmine says, and from the sounds of it, she’s been calling her name for a minute now.

“Sorry,” Raleigh mumbles. “I - I got lost inside my own head - ”

“Inside Yancy’s head, too.” Jazmine sounds sad and sounds very, very small. “I know you miss him.”

“Very much,” Raleigh says. “And you miss him, too.”

“I miss both of you.” Jazmine sounds vehement. Almost angry. Raleigh can imagine her expression clearly: she’ll be torn right down the middle between being angry and being sad. She misses that face, misses her sister, and her arms are empty and she is cold and alone here in this place of winter’s heart.

So Raleigh squares her shoulders and says, “Well, if you had plans to be anywhere near Hong Kong any time soon - ”

“What would you be doing in Hong Kong? I thought the plans for a wall there had been sunk.”

“They have been. But I - I think I’m going back to the Shatterdome there.”

“I - _what?_ ”

Raleigh squares her shoulders, though there is no one to see her standing straight and tall. “The Marshal found me here. He asked me to come back.”

Jazmine blows out a long sigh. “I’d never think about stopping you from doing whatever you want. Doesn’t mean I can’t have objections.”

“I need you to have objections, Jaz.”

“And I’ll give you all I’ve got. Starting with, _why_?”

“Because - ” Raleigh thinks about the drawn look in the Marshal’s face, the darkness hanging beneath his eyes and dogging his footsteps. “Because things are coming to an end.”

“They’ve been coming to an end for years.”

“And this is the end of it, the end of everything,” Raleigh says. “Because he says he’s ready for a last-ditch mission. And he needs me, I don’t know why, because I’ve not Drifted with anyone since the Knifehead fight, not that I can hold a handshake with Yancy still in my head - ”

“So, what are you to this guy, then? Just another gun? Just another soldier? But you’ve already said yes, if you’re talking to me about going to Hong Kong.”

“I’ll likely be useless but I can still help in some other way. Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t known anything since we lost Yancy.” Raleigh sighs. “But you taught me that it’s good to learn things. I learned to carry you right after you were born.”

“If only my memories could go back that far,” Jazmine says. “I’ll never know unless I go into the Drift, and I’m not going to do that.”

“You were warm and soft and quiet except when you were crying.”

“I bet I cried a lot.”

“You did,” Raleigh says, as gently as she can. “Didn’t stop me.”

“I’m glad. I wish I could hold you right now. I don’t want you to do this. It’s rushing off for nothing, Raleigh. But - you have to. Since you decided. If it’ll help - ”

“Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But I’ll be doing something.”

“Said something will of course just leave me jittering with all the worry in the world,” Jazmine says, and she sounds gentle and resigned. “I’ll come as soon as I can. And you be safe, Raleigh. I’ll be very angry if they send me the package with your personal effects.”

“I know.”

“Raleigh?” Jazmine asks after another moment of whistling wind that drives snow into Raleigh’s face.

“Jaz. Talk to me. I’m your sister.”

“And I’m yours. I miss you. I love you.”

“I love you, Jaz.”

***

It is one of Mako’s tasks to draw up the shore leave schedules of the critical Jaeger personnel at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and it is a task that she performs well: she makes sure that the Kaidonovskys and the Wei triplets share their respective days off, and she makes sure that Hercules Hansen is on base when his son Chuck is not. She knows that there are specific dates on which Tendo Choi will not be overseeing Drift tests and deployments. She makes allowances for Newton Geiszler’s tendency to run off looking for kaiju-related lore, and she notes the hours of overtime that Hermann Gottlieb logs in.

Because this is her task she also knows about off-base medical appointments and check-ups, and she knows exactly when she has to remind Mister Stacker - still _Marshal Stacker_ , here, though he has exchanged his Ranger dress uniform for a tailored suit - to refill his various prescriptions.

It’s not a secret, and it hasn’t been, not since a candid confession over a quiet dinner in a darkened home. 

He’d promised her that he wouldn’t be dying on her, not yet, not for a long time, and he seems to be holding on to that promise with everything that he’s got. 

But he’s refilling those prescriptions more and more frequently now and Mako has had to learn to smile, while she braces herself for the inevitability that is closing in on him.

She’s hearing those booming footsteps in her dreams again. She used to cower and wait with gritted teeth for the unseen monster to devour her at last. Now she dreams of chasing down a dream of a Jaeger that is walking and running away from her, always pulling ahead into the distance until she can no longer call out to it - until she cannot be heard by its pilot.

Mako pulls a smile onto her face, now, as she types her security code onto a keypad, as she turns the heavy locking wheel and finds herself in a small, cramped office. There is barely enough space for her to maneuver around the large boat of a sagging desk in the center. Piles of papers, old blueprints, personnel dossiers that contain Mako’s own annotations and assessments - all in neat stacks, carefully organized, around the single patch of clear space.

Here is a coffee cup that she remembers from that house. The chip in the rim has been smoothed over by time and use, but it is still white against the dark green glaze that is, perhaps, starting to wear down at last.

For all she knows, it is the only other thing that survived the house where she’d stood on unsteady feet atop a low chair, learning to use a paring knife and making mince out of an apple in the process.

Here her memories fail her. She cannot remember if the cup survived a drop, or if it had simply been washed up and gotten knocked around in the process. One day the cup had been pristine and the next it had gotten chipped, and either Mister Stacker had glued it back together or she had pointed out to him that it was still actually good to use.

Mako sets the cup back down and picks up the photograph in its worn steel frame. The glass shines brightly at her, all the better for her to see the torn corners on the photograph pinned within. A girl in a coat and a scarf, standing next to a man in a fur-lined jacket. She just barely comes up to his waist, even with the extra inches on her little wooden clogs. She is brightly dressed and he is all in dark shades. 

Neither of them are smiling, even though Mako knows that this had been taken on one of her birthdays, the same day they’d found out about his getting a combat citation for bravery.

The little girl who bears her face is carrying a small box in both hands - and that, at least, can make Mako smile now, because the world has turned and things have gotten worse and candy now costs a king’s ransom, but she has that box or something like it now in her pockets.

Every penny she paid is already worth it.

She places her sheaf of papers - next month’s shore leave schedules - on the corresponding stack on the desk. She polishes the coffee cup on her sleeve and shirttail, and does the same for the framed photograph.

Marshal Stacker Pentecost is en route to Alaska, now, on a trip that Mako herself had recommended he make: he’s trying to find a missing Ranger, one of the bare handful of Jaeger pilots still surviving, and when he returns it will be the New Year, and the tradition of eating sweet things can still hold true at the very edge of the end of the world.

So Mako takes the box from her pocket and looks at the confectionery within - a miniature of the traditional stacked rice cakes called _kagami mochi_ , then a sweet in the shape of a bitter orange, then a piece of cake baked in the shape of an opened folding fan - before she places it right in front of the photograph. She arranges it just so, one edge tilted towards the person who would sit behind the desk, and then she slips out of the office, making sure to lock the door.

Only when she’s back in her room does she allow herself to sniffle and brush away the impending tears, that not even the piece of candy that she tucks into her cheek can sweeten or chase away.

***

From snow to rain. Raleigh peers out the windows of the chopper and can’t see anything for the thick sheets of water, nearly horizontal lines.

She doesn’t have an umbrella, and she doesn’t know Hong Kong: seawater and millions of people and old steel mixed in with the new.

As they circle the tarmac she catches a glimpse of a person standing alone under a black umbrella, and there is something about that person’s posture that reminds Raleigh of her own younger self, trying to eat a piece of candy all alone before she has to share the rest of the bag with Yancy and Jazmine. She’d always been happy to share the candy, always been happy to laugh with them as they ate themselves into sugar highs, but she’d always taken the first bite, sneaking into a corner to try the candy and experience it just for herself.

She pats her pockets for the one thing she’d taken with her from Nome: a metal box, rusty around the edges but still too colorful. Red and gold and an image of a smiling woman in a kimono on the outside. It had been a coffee tin when she’d scrounged it up on one of her many trips around the Pacific Ocean, coast to coast around the dark places where she’d found herself and lost half of her heart.

After she’d washed it and dried it she’d used it to store something else - and she shakes out the last of her stash into her hand, pockets one for herself and offers another to the Marshal.

“No, thank you,” is his reply, polite and distant and cold.

Raleigh shrugs and tries to stay loose because the chopper is landing.

The person under the umbrella, who is also carrying another umbrella, has blue streaks in her short, dark hair. She is wearing a black coat, severely belted and buttoned up. 

The thing that sticks out of one of her pockets is wrapped in crinkly paper, shiny even under the overcast skies.

Raleigh takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders and steps out onto the tarmac, and the rain plasters her hair down - but she smiles and shakes her head when the second umbrella is thrust at her.

The other woman looks at her with a critical eye, before she says in a voice that carries even in the storm, “ _Youkoso Hong Kong e. Mori Mako desu. Hajimemashite._ ”

Raleigh scrabbles for the remains of the Japanese course she’d crammed into her own head and Yancy’s and replies with what she hopes are the right phrases: “ _Raleigh Becket desu. Hajimemashite. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu._ ”

Strangely, the woman - Mako - smiles, a brief sharp sliver, there and gone again. “ _Kochira koso._ This way please.”

And then Raleigh offers her the piece of marshmallow candy. White fluff dusted with fine sugar, surrounding a small nugget of chocolate filling. 

Mako takes the candy and puts something in Raleigh’s hand in return: a small black plastic box with a clear lid, wrapped in a further layer of pliable plastic. Inside the box lies a dark blue five-pointed star, about as large as one of Raleigh’s own fingertips. A sharp whiff of vanilla, fleeting, quickly overwhelmed by the driving salt of the falling rain.

Raleigh smiles, and walks in Mako’s wake.

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the Japanese-language conversation between Mako and Raleigh:
> 
> M: _Youkoso Hong Kong e. Mori Mako desu. Hajimemashite._ [Welcome to Hong Kong. My name is Mako Mori. It's good to meet you.]
> 
> R: _Raleigh Becket desu. Hajimemashite. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu._ [I'm Raleigh Becket. It's good to meet you. {Please be kind to me} or {I'm indebted to you}.]
> 
> M: _Kochira koso._ [Likewise.]


End file.
